Various pictures from my past. Too bad digital cameras were
not around 20 years ago, I would have a lot more to share!

If you are going to write and talk about Automotive products and vehicles, it's best to have experience about the subject matter. I have plenty of that. I have been involved with building vehicles since a I was a teenager.

In the mid 1980's, for a bit, I used to hang out with a group where we all were into 4X4s and trucks. (I had a 1971 Ford F250 Camper Special at the time myself).

Anyway, one of the guys in the group had a Dodge W100. While he drove the truck daily, it had been modified to run a monthly mud competition, one Saturday of each month.

This truck had a 340 (Dodge trucks never came with 340's just 360s, but this engine was originally from a 70's Dodge car, and had the usual Dodge forged pistons, rods, and crank, etc.).

While mudding, you can get some water and or sand in the engine, which just plays havoc with bearings and piston rings. So every month or two those are changed.

I remember us working on the truck and engine till 4:00AM getting it ready, with just a couple of hours of sleep, and then driving an hour away to race it the next morning.

The owner of the truck drove through the mud "bog", with a best time of around 14.00 seconds. This truck was a bat out of hell nasty, and that was the time to beat. However, the judges said one tire had gone out of bounds on one side, so the time could not be used.

This made the guys brother so angry, he wanted to drive the next run which he did.

He must have been really upset because he just put the hammer down, and thrashed that truck. Everyone watching thought he was going to blow that Dodge up or break something for sure.

But he took it to the end with the fastest time of the day to win the event, around 13.50 !

Those were the days!

I'll never forget that weekend. Or working on that truck.

Sometimes circumstances can do unusual things to car guys till sometime later when you get older, you start to wonder: What was I thinking ?

I picked up the 1977 Dodge SE for $ 50.00. The woman told me the car overheated all the time. I told her the thermostat was probably stuck, but she no longer wanted the car, she wanted to get rid of it. Nice lady too.

So I took the car home, took the thermostat out, and it was ok. (later I did replace it).

The car has a 318, and was actually a really good running car. But I knew I could improve that.

I read an article in a car magazine that Dodge retarded the timing on 318s, 4-degress, for emissions. I figured the timing chain was probably whipped anyway, so off came the stock nylon gears and on when a double roller, which allowed me to advance the timing 4-degrees to where it should have been. Wow, it really made a difference. Especially in the torque.

My next step was to have a shift kit installed in the 904 transmission. It had something like 3 settings, I forget exactly, let's say street, towing, and race. I went for race. The mechanic said it would probably trash the tranny, but that was ok with me, I had next to no money in the car anyway's.

This modification made a big difference as well. The shifts were crisp and tight. It would now bark the tires going into second.

I then installed a 4-barrel intake and 4-barrel, and that took the car to a whole new level. I remember a guy from work at the time going with me to lunch. I punched it to pass around a bus, the car took off and BANG! it went into second gear. It was so loud and abrupt the whole car seemed to shake. He thought the rear end came out. It was pretty funny.

Overall, it was a fun car to test and just beat on. I had it for a few years and later sold it to another guy for a few hundred dollars.

Note: That flat black paint was done by me, out of spray cans. She was ugly, but she had the get up and go !

For a short time I worked at a company where we straightened out frames on Heavy Trucks. This was the machine from BeeLine .

I found it interesting how well this machine could easily manipulate a frame. It took some skill to over bend, and have the frame "come back" to where it needed to be. But I learned quite a bit about truck frames and suspensions. I also learned how to re-arch leaf springs. From Dump Trucks to Cement Trucks.

Around 1998-2000 I was able to inspect and sit in a Ford Electric Ranger through a Ford Engineer I met.

I owned a new gas 1995 Ford Ranger myself. But I think this was the first electric vehicle I had actually come in contact with. It was interesting to see and learn about. I forget the exact weight, but I believe he told me it was around 4000 lbs with all the batteries, which, if I remember correctly, were under the truck between the frame rails.

As with all electric vehicles, it was totally quite when running. There was a gauge on the dash to tell you what charge you had left in the batteries. But from the outside, it looked like any stock Ranger.

You can find out more about these trucks from Wikipedia.

Being a south Florida native, this is a great area to grow up and live in. It truly is an International community, full of interesting and diverse cultures.

Having many Island / Jamaican friends over the years, I was exposed to Asian market cars early on.

It's funny to see the Fast & Furious movies now, considering I was involved with so called "Tuners" years before the movies came out and it was popular nationwide. Here in Miami, that whole market was ahead of everybody.

One of my friends later in the early 1990's built and raced rotary powered cars, as did many of his friends. Legally at the drag strip, but I also remember many a late nights, us all meeting in the warehouse areas and showing off each others cars.

Many a night I would go over and help them rebuilt 13-Bs at his house. We would all drink some rum, talk cars, do some wrenching, and just have a good time.

When I was a kid, my mother had bought a 1973 RX3-Wagon new, a great car, and I have a soft spot for rotary's, they are just a great little engine.

(The pictures is of a 13-B raced in an early Datsun 510.)